The present invention relates generally to content management and related services, and more particularly, to methods, systems, and computer program products for providing multi-viewpoint media content services.
When groups of people gather together for an event such as a music concert, they often call friends on their cellular telephones to share the concert experience in real time via the telephone or similar mobile communications device. With the recent proliferation of mobile communications devices, this type of behavior is becoming more prevalent whereby event attendees raise their devices in the direction of the event in order to broadcast the audio and/or video content to the respective calling-receiving parties.
Capturing various viewpoints of an event can provide interesting and unique perspectives of the event that are generally not available to the viewing audience as a whole. Oftentimes, activities occurring during the event, which are not the intended focus of the event, can be more interesting than the actual event itself. A limited population of event-goers in a relatively large event arena are often exposed to interesting ‘localized’ activities, e.g., exuberant attendees, unintended incidents, etc., that are not visible to many attendees situated a distance from the incidents. Thus, most event-goers are not able to fully appreciate the event experience as a whole. In addition, the general public (non-event goers) may be interested in the event, as well as the points of view captured by the event-goers.
What is needed, therefore, is a way to provide multi-viewpoint media content services that allow individuals to access event-related content taken from multiple points of view via communications devices utilized by event-goers as well as a production system managing the event. What is also needed is a way to manage the receipt and processing of the content from these communications devices that facilitates access to the event-related content.